January 17, 2013

But it's very heavy-handed propaganda deployed to critique propaganda. You won't slip into falling for Drudge's propaganda, because it's so obvious. It's ridiculous to equate Obama to Hitler and Stalin, but Obama is using a form of propaganda that should be considered not merely ridiculous but repulsive. For us today to see Hitler and Stalin using children is to easily perceive the absurdity of promoting a political agenda juxtaposing it to a lovely, innocent child.

Who falls for that? No one should! The implicit argument the political leader makes, in all 3 of these pictures, is: I'm making the country good for the sake of the children. The child can't vouch for the policies. The child hasn't competently requested anything. The child is merely a prop representing goodness, innocence, and the future.

No reason to condemn that. It's too late to reject the kind of old-fashioned political kitsch that goes in the same category as eating regional food. You know, what Bob Dylan was singing about in "I Shall Be Free":

Now, the man on the stand he wants my vote
He’s a-runnin’ for office on the ballot note
He’s out there preachin’ in front of the steeple
Tellin’ me he loves all kinds-a people
(He’s eatin’ bagels
He’s eatin’ pizza
He’s eatin’ chitlins
He’s eatin’ bullshit!)

220 comments:

I agree that the poses with babies and children on the campaign trail are intended to humanize. That's different and less objectionable than posing with children in support of a specific program.

So in this sense, Obama's gun-control photo op is worse than the pictures of Stalin and Hitler. Stalin and Hitler probably weren't campaigning as we understand it, but they were trying to humanize themselves. It was just a bigger stretch than Bush's or Obama's campaign pictures.

I could care less about the propaganda with children. The real problem here is the use of feelings and emotion to enact policy that hasn't worked, won't work, and will waste money that could feed, clothe, and care for children pursuing policies that progressives know WON'T WORK.

No, it is not a ridiculous comparison. It forces people to face the dangerous and ridiculous nature of the propaganda techniques Obama is using. I know plenty of people who swoon when the "it's for the children" card is played.

But it's very heavy-handed propaganda deployed to critique propaganda. You won't slip into falling for Drudge's propaganda, because it's so obvious.

That's odd. I didn't think it was so heavy handed myself. Both Hitler and Stalin confiscated guns, then went after their own population. It's a reminder that an unarmed population is subject to tyranny.

Can't happen here? Why not? Who knows what the country will look like 100 years from now with facial recognition everywhere, with drones all over the place, and with so many laws you can't do anything.

You won't be able to eat what you want, drink what you want, walk across the street where you want, and certainly, most assuredly, you won't be able to write anything negative about the government without being put in jail.

Don't think so? The government will simply rewind its tapes of you and find you drinking a big gulp, smoking a cigarette in an illegal place, and they will destroy you.

I'll say it again. This guy supports women having the unrestricted right to murder their unborn children so the sight of him surrounded by children as props to push his agenda is nothing short of sickening.

I've had little use for Presidents since Reagan but this guy is especially reprehensible.

I don't think there is anything untoward about appearing with children, kissing babies, or having your own kids on stage with you. (And certainly having your own kids on stage with your or talking about your family does not make them "fair game" to political opponents.

But giving out awards to special olympians or meeting with a group of kids who come to the white house and take a picture with them... I do think that gathering the kids around for something that is not about *them* but about a separate political cause and you gather the kids around because they work like human shields for your political purpose... that's sort of icky. If it's Piers Morgan or any of the others that answer the "great debate about guns" with "tell that to the dead children in Sandy Hook, you monster!" or the president who has these kids around him when he makes his announcements... that's a little bit different, isn't it?

And really... pointing out that Obama's daughters go to a school with many armed guards (and not just "mall cops" either) isn't involving his daughters in any personal way. It's not criticizing THEM at all.

Why do kids even have any gravitas at all anyway. They're all chicken hawks. All of them, except a few in Hollywood, avoid paying their fair share of taxes. They are mostly loud, obnoxious, and have poor grooming and sanitary habits. They eat boogers and often wear shorts. I don't want to be see with them in public. I'll vote for the first guy to disassociate himself with their whole organization. Wake up people. They plan on taking over the whole world soon. They've done it before.

I have developed a strong negative* reaction upon seeing pictures of Obama, particularly in a suit, particularly with his skinny hands up in the air making some point in his annoying voice that I probably vehemently disagree with--and yet-seeing that picture of him in a casual shirt cuddling that baby like a daddy does still makes my lizard brain go Awwwwwww, isn't that sweet, look at that nice daddy-man caring for that baby which is the point, of course, but then my non-lizard brain reminds me of what I know about the guy and optics and manipulation.

Once I overheard a friend on the phone buying a house in San Francisco. I'm glad I remembered that just now and got it down in writing at least once because that was very odd, as if ordering a pizza. Tru fax.

And now I'm hearing the most cynical thing imaginable and imagining that normal.

"Get me a bunch of kids. And do I have to say it? A couple white ones, a black one, a brown one, at least one girl ... okay curly hair! And one 'em blond, a blond boy, yeah, make it a blond boy, and have the girl in a little doll dress with those strap shoes."

Marshal, exactly. I have a dark vein of intolerance. I'm septic with unappeasable hatred, to bastardize a comment someone made about Sherman Alexie. Getting that out there to save the usual suspects the trouble of pointing it out the rest of you from the resulting thread-clutter.

On the one hand, Manti could be analogized to the gullible voters (and media, heckuva job with the layers of factcheckers)buying the bullshit propoganda Obama is shoveling. If you believe he (Te'o) was just gullible and not involved.

On the other, as I suspect, Te'o was in on the deception, for sympathy, for publicity, or as a beard, then it's just an excuse to make fun of Allie/Inga/Manti.

As to Drudge's own propaganda, the screengrap featured here has the item that follows,

Flashback: Tyrants who have used ... but omits the item that follows that on Drudge:

Hospital to stop delivering babies because of Obamacare.

So where exactly in general Liberal psyche does deep abiding care for children begin?

I have the weirdest answer to that outside of politics. And I mean weird. I got the idea from a book. And the answer is about five years old. That's when the deep abiding care begins.

Know why?

Goes like this: it takes about that long for a child to make its first moral decision.

Before that the child is meat, to put it bluntly. A thing strictly between man and woman on Earth. But at the moment of the child's first moral decision the child becomes imbued with eternity potential.

It can be visualize as divinity being unable to take residence within the child until it faces a moral quandary and makes a decision one way or another. That is the signal that cues divinity and makes it possible to attune with the child. Only then does the child have eternity potential. In fact, that's the only thing that has eternity potential. It does happen that some damaged children never do make a moral decision.

For most kids that happens at about five years. By this cosmology then, for me it happened at three and half years and involved a Wonder bread sandwich and Velveeta cheese. A momentous occasion.

As far as gun control is concerned, I worry more about the great unwashed who covet my property than the government. For starters the US military evident is unable to defeat a bunch of 11th century goatherders in Afghanistan so I doubt they would be much of a match for 100 million armed citizens here.

But its my fellow citizens who worry me more as leftists like Obama thrive on class warfare agitprop convincing the less fortunate I didn't really build my wealth.

500,000 Tutsis were hacked to death in a little over three months. Im sure if they had a second amendment, the story might have been different.

Dante wrote:I didn't think it was so heavy handed myself. Both Hitler and Stalin confiscated guns...

I do not think either Drudge or Ann intended such a specific critique, though what you have written about Stalin and Hitler is true (in Stalin's case most firearms in private hands had been confiscated by his predecessors in power, both communist and tsarist). Drudge used a heavy hand for a purpose, to point out the fundamental dishonesty at work when politicians use children as props.

In Obama's case political child abuse (i.e. political abuse involving children) both and old story and a basic tactic. He may have used similar methods getting elected to the Senate, though I know of no instance. But do you remember this bit of demagogic kiddie porn from 2008? Should have been a warning to the wise.

Why is it ridiculous? Because Obama is such a nice polite young man? Because he hasn't slaughtered millions? Maybe Hitler hadn't yet slaughtered millions when that photo was taken.

Up your game, Althouse.

You know why we've never had a genocidal dictatorship here in the US? A well-armed citizenry. We're not morally or intellectually superior to the Germans, who produced Beethoven, Bach, Einstein, Bohr, and Kepler. There's only one thing preventing an American Hitler from springing up some day; and it happens to be the one thing Obama and his supporters would most like to be rid of.

Hitler, Stalin, and Obama are all pro-gun control. (And statists and fascists who bypassed their equivalent of a congress to impose their policies.) There are quite a few shared traits to consider such a comparison so "ridiculous" that you can assert this with no argument to back it up.

Chip Ahoy wrote:For most kids that happens at about five years. By this cosmology then, for me it happened at three and half years and involved a Wonder bread sandwich and Velveeta cheese. A momentous occasion.

Was the decision related to moral concept of ownership? Did tiny Chip Ahoy discover an unattended cheese food product sambo and was thus tempted to abscond with same? Or was the calculus more subtle, something which presaged a budding culinary aesthetic? Something like dare I corrupt these wheaten slices with this mere gelatinous curd posing as a member of the venerable order of cheese? Or did toddling Chip reflect on the ethical dimensions of the industrial practice of bleaching away the virtues of the staff of life only to replace them with synthetic equivalents?

The Department of Education has shotguns ( http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/answer-sheet/wp/2013/01/17/why-u-s-education-department-has-27-12-gauge-shotguns/ )...must be FOR THE CHILDREN.Permit arming the real first responders: teachers and staff.

At that time the disciples came to Jesus and said, “Who then is greatest in the kingdom of heaven?” And He called a child to Himself and set him before them, and said, “Truly I say to you, unless you are converted and become like children, you will not enter the kingdom of heaven. “Whoever then humbles himself as this child, he is the greatest in the kingdom of heaven. “And whoever receives one such child in My name receives Me; but whoever causes one of these little ones who believe in Me to stumble, it would be better for him to have a heavy millstone hung around his neck, and to be drowned in the depth of the sea.

I see this as different from the examples in modern politics, but then that is my Savior we are talking about. 8)

Well he is right! That is what makes the mention of Reagan supporting an assault weapons ban so hideous!

The letter opposing assault weapons that Reagan signed onto was released in May of 1994! Reagan announced his Alzheimer diagnosis in November of 1994! Are we to believe that Reagan knew what he was endorsing?

I can accept "using" children to maintain or create a perception of an individual's humanity. I cannot accept using children as props to argue the validity of a policy. A policy which neither addresses the causes nor serves to mitigate the risk of committing a crime that purportedly justified its existence.

This is simple emotional extortion in order to obfuscate a policy presented with ulterior motives.

In case anyone thinks this is still irrelevant, their obsession to normalize elective abortion undermines any of their claims to moral fitness. If they do care about children, and they do, it is selective. Their principle interest, and Obama's interest, in children surviving abortion is exploitation to acquire democratic leverage.

"There's only one thing preventing an American Hitler from springing up some day"

The Constitution.

That didn't stop Lincoln. It's not a blatant usurpation of power you would see but some kind of cataclysmic even where the Constitution is shelved for 'national security'. Hitler did so after the Reichstag fire. Liberals believed Bush did the same thing after 9/11.

But again, I worry more about the great unwashed than Uncle Sam. For now anyway.

Obama's child army propaganda (this is not the first time) is so shameless and stupid (to say nothing of hypocritical) that I cannot find fault with Drudge pointing it out satirically. Godwin's law is going to be severely tested over the next four years.

Unions were never needed. As you pointed out, they're for crybabies who don't want to work hard.

Guns, however, are always needed. The violent impulse of criminals and politicians (but I repeat myself) are best kept in check by good citizens. Armed good citizens are the biggest fears criminals and politicians have.

The time is ripe for a neo-noir literary movement. Crime thriller are all very technical these days, very scientific -- forensic anthropologist exposes decades-old murder from few scraps of bone -- medical examiner reveals "accidental" celebrity death to be no so accidental -- profiler tracks psychopath to his lair -- and you can see the resolution coming a mile off, the writer being more expert in some narrow professional field than the idioms of detective fiction. What we need is a new Philip Marlowe or a reincarnate Sam Spade to dig the truth out of the filth our "lord and saviour" piles on our heads daily.

I would disagree. First and foremost they created safe working conditions at a time when factory work was as hazerdous as combat. Fair wages and treatment as well.

Today its less about workers rights than empowering union bosses. Pendulum swung too far in the other direction and rather work as partners with the employer, they would rather let the company die off. But the bosses don't care, they got theirs.

I would disagree. First and foremost they created safe working conditions at a time when factory work was as hazerdous as combat. Fair wages and treatment as well.

Today its less about workers rights than empowering union bosses. Pendulum swung too far in the other direction and rather work as partners with the employer, they would rather let the company die off. But the bosses don't care, they got theirs.

I concur with the Colonel. I have no problem with the existence of private unions. The public ones are less favorable because their management are the taxpayers.

I do care about "for the children!" as a justification for legislation or executive action.

Especially when there's no reason whatsoever to believe the actions taken will do more good than harm - ignoring, arguendo, the issue of human rights vis-a-vis effective self defense - for children or anyone else.

"For the children!" is a lousy reason to push for the same wish-list your side has been pushing for 20 or 30 years.

(See "because terrorism!" and the Patriot Act wish-list; most of it was not especially objectionable, but most of it also had almost nothing to do with the alleged reason either.)

When you go back 100 years ago and look at the number of workers killed in industries such as mines and railroading, you can see why unions and gov't safety standards were needed.

Today unions do things like promote abortion and the gov't does things like require free birth control. That shows that unions and new gov't regulations are not needed when they are down to those issues.

It attitudes like yours that will finally push this to a violent conclusion. When it comes Obama will call on the military to retrieve his bacon from from the fire, which will in turn trigger mass mutinies and insurrections. Then... well, Obama and his myrmidons will discover the real meaning of the Second Amendment.

First thought: I'll bet the parents carry that image in their hearts till the day they die. Lord Obama blessed my child. Oh fortunate, fortunate. A personal and intimate blessing, so much more meaningful than just having been present in a crown when the Master spoke.

Second thought: from Alan Moorehead's "The White Nile," chapter dealing with The Mahdi, Khartoum, and Gordon. "People would drink the Madhi's bathwater in the belief that it would confer good fortune on them."

Obama using children to advance the impression that he is doing good for the children is also ironic. His spending has ruined their future, and the future of this country. He believes in abortion -- and many "babies" are not present today because of his beliefs.

Obama's shameless exploitation of children as a background prop for his power grab (multicultural rainbow of course, but he left out an Asian and a transgendered child)is offensive to anyone with critical thinking skills. But people are stupid and emotional, at least the democrat base.

Well in part because as an actual taxpayer, I was never invited to be present when negotiating salary and benefit contracts.

Yea, and I, as an actual taxpayer, was never invited to be present when negotiating the hundreds of billions of dollars of subsidies, contracts, and incentives that are handed out to private corporate bosses.

--Yea, and I, as an actual taxpayer, was never invited to be present when negotiating the hundreds of billions of dollars of subsidies, contracts, and incentives that are handed out to private corporate bosses.--

Once could argue 1 voted for your congressman to do that vs. the bureaucracy.

Yea, and I, as an actual taxpayer, was never invited to be present when negotiating the hundreds of billions of dollars of subsidies, contracts, and incentives that are handed out to private corporate bosses.

Yea, and I, as an actual taxpayer, was never invited to be present when negotiating the hundreds of billions of dollars of subsidies, contracts, and incentives that are handed out to private corporate bosses.

For someone who certainly seems to favor big government, your implied disdain for this practice is ironic.

garage mahal said... Well in part because as an actual taxpayer, I was never invited to be present when negotiating salary and benefit contracts.

Yea, and I, as an actual taxpayer, was never invited to be present when negotiating the hundreds of billions of dollars of subsidies, contracts, and incentives that are handed out to private corporate bosses.

The irony will be lost that the cure for both situations is the removal of as much power from all levels of government. But that won't sink in now will it?

Yea, and I, as an actual taxpayer, was never invited to be present when negotiating the hundreds of billions of dollars of subsidies, contracts, and incentives that are handed out to private corporate bosses.

One child had a habit of creeping silently into our bedroom to tell us she had a nightmare. She wouldn't make a sound, and you would awake with skeletal fingers on your arm, and this creepy child in the moonlight staring down at you. Oh, that's my daughter. Heart rate through the roof. No more sleep.

As a conservative I find the Obama/Hitler/Stalin comparisons tedious and insultingly inadequate. Stuff like that makes conservative ideology look ridiculous because the claim, made by people who identify as conservatives, is ridiculous.

Obama is Carter on steroids. That is an apt and accurate description. The others are so hyperbolic as to be alien.

For us today to see Hitler and Stalin using children is to easily perceive the absurdity of promoting a political agenda juxtaposing it to a lovely, innocent child. Who falls for that? No one should!

Hey, it's just propaganda – and just a small part of the flood of propaganda that all of us must internalize.

Who falls for it? Well, just about everyone. Propaganda works very well. It shouldn't but it does. An individual must consciously fight against it for it to be neutralized but few do. Indeed, few are even aware they are being manipulated and much of it is disguised as "news."

--Yea, and I, as an actual taxpayer, was never invited to be present when negotiating the hundreds of billions of dollars of subsidies, contracts, and incentives that are handed out to private corporate bosses.--

Yea, and I, as an actual taxpayer, was never invited to be present when negotiating the hundreds of billions of dollars of subsidies, contracts, and incentives that are handed out to private corporate bosses.

Now you are talking! All this taxation is forced spending. On whatever the government wants. That's what happens when you give all that power to the government.

What can you do if your toddler won't limit his magazine to 10 rounds? You can't put him jail. He/she can just laugh at you maniacally while she slides in cartridges 11-30. "Time out? No, I don't think we'll be doing that anymore Dad."

Maybe Sandra Fluke has a point.

When the kids find out what we are doing to them, we are gonna get wiped out. If it wasn't for Fox News, they'd never find out. Stop Fox Now!

Pettifogger wrote:I agree that the poses with babies and children on the campaign trail are intended to humanize. That's different and less objectionable than posing with children in support of a specific program.

that's true. Every time a president is enacting a program and he's flanked by kids, you can tell there's some serious propaganda going on.

It's cynical and cheap, but sometimes if you agree with the program its neutral.

Tough I can't totally flat Obama on this. He's joining a long list of presidents doing the exact same thing.

We have to do it for the children!

By the way, lets have.a president do it for the children when it comes to abortion. We need to take emergency measures to help the children from being murdered.

Here's my idea. The president is surrounded by kids on a stage as he lays out his plans to protect the kids from abortion. Slowly the lights go out on portions of the kids so it looks like they are no longer on the stage. Till finally the only light left is pointing at the president and he's all alone on the stage. Get. It? the kids aren't there a yore because they were able rted. The president needs to do something to help them from disappearing!Cynical? Exploitative? sure. But if Obama can do it for guns why can't the right do it for aboetion, especially considering millions of fetuses are aborted every year versus maybe a few hundred dying in school shootings, and that's overly generous.

Plus, its theatric. Obama using the kids is just boring. If you're going to do political thater, might as well make it dramatic.

Hitler and the National Socialists are generally thought to be Fascist; private ownership but government control of the means of production.

Stalin is generally thought to be a Communist; government both owns and controls the means of production.

Both were totalitarians who used powers of government as an instrument of terror to keep the People subjugated.

Obama is more Communist than Fascist, willing to accept some private ownership of property but with an end objective of abolishing private ownership.

Obama is a totalitarian. He understands and uses the power of the State, arbitrarily applied, as an instrument of Terror to destroy the Rule of Law. His objective is to replace a State subject to the People with a State sovereign over the People.

However Obama's domestic use of Terror is thought not to extend beyond confiscation of private property and incarceration of citizens. Murder and assassination are generally believed limited to drone strikes and other acts of war on foreign soil.

Sometimes children do matter and should be part of the visual dialog-- like when twenty of your school mates have been gunned down before your eyes. And sometimes they are used to evoke a "volk" feeling that gets you to ignore that Jewish and Gypsy children will be killed in state sanctioned ovens. There is a difference and Althouse is right to say that Obama's use of children should not be compared to Hitler's....

Colonel Angus - "500,000 Tutsis were hacked to death in a little over three months. Im sure if they had a second amendment, the story might have been different."

It would have facilitated a faster genocide if both the Tutsis and the Hutus had a 2nd Amendment tradition and the notion of the Armed Hero Citizen.

The lack of firearms slowed the pace enough to allow 40% of the Tutsis to escape.Had they faced Armed Hero Gunowners on the Hutu side, outnumbered 7 to 1 - along with organized Hutu-controlled government troops and radio that could direct gun-wielding masses it would have allowed the Hutus a more complete wipeout of the minority.

Generally, the last thing a prosperous and powerful minority wants is an armed and resentful citizenry. Such minorities - Jews in Europe&Russia & Muslim countries, overseas Chinese in Asia, rich and powerful African minorities have tried doing all in their power to stop any sort of "2nd Amendment Right" - preferring to stake their safety on gaining the favor of the strong central authority through money and guile and doing skills the gen population lacks.In America, strong overall support by blacks and Jew for strong and large goverment that enforces laws for keeping guns out of the hands of the majority - stem from historical memory of what "Armed Hero peasants and Klansmen" do

There is a difference and Althouse is right to say that Obama's use of children should not be compared to Hitler's....

Are you truly this dense, or are you trying to pull a fast one? Ann has neither said nor implied what you have so blatantly mis-attributed to her. Ann's point about comparisons refers to comparisons of Obama to Hitler and Stalin as national leaders and moral actors, and not to this specific instance of the cynical use of children as political props in which Obama comparable to every politician who has used children in this way (this class includes Hitler and Stalin, btw, which ought to give any political figure cause to reflect on the company he keeps when doing such an odious deed).

Hitler's guys had a big plan to have many babies ASAP among SS fathers and German farmer's daughters.

After all once the 200,000,000 Russian Slavs and Eastern European mongrels were worked or starved to death, there would be a need to repopulate that third of the world before moving on to do the same in North America.

And the nuclear fusion bomb was first available to the Germans, but they threw out the Jews who figured it out. But the race to produce one first was a race to beat Hitler's plans for us.

The Japanese who were scheduled to be beaten second only got bombed because The Russian Army got to Berlin and the American Army got to the German's Atomic Weapons Development centers in April 1945.

Cedarford's M.O. is like liberals in that he takes a well known truth, labels it a myth, and then makes up a myth to replace the truth. The fact that we know something to be true is supposed to be the tell that it's false, or something. He's a really smart guy, because he knows stuff normal people don't. I'm in no position to argue - I fall for the easy stuff: sky is blue, children are evil, Obama's a dick.

Shana said...Cedarford, I would take my odds against 7 to 1 with a gun in hand rather than a machete, even if the other seven had guns too. What heavily armed populace has been a victim of that kind of genocide?

====================Shana - you would just die faster and maybe less gruesomely.As for the general way of warfare, since time immemorial, a smaller heavily armed force - civilian, tribal, military - almost always loses to a far larger opposing force.

What is done in victory over the well-armed Apaches, Maronite Christians, Tutsis, armed Red revolutionaries in Indonesia, Haziris of Afghanistan, white colonial settlers in Africa..is a function of avenues of retreat to safety and whatever goodwill and mercy the victors have in them.

Walker is the only governor in the nation with a legal defense fund. He has stuck hundreds of thousands of dollars into it. And the John Doe is still open. That would leave me to believe Walker feels he needs money and lawyers to defend himself against charges.

TIP: When you put "quotation marks" around a sentence and attribute it someone, that means you are quoting somebody. Which in this case was incorrect, and you look like an incompetent idiot.

I can admit that I was incorrect in putting the quotes around any day now. That actually was one of the many commenters on this site taunting you for your feverish liberal wet dreams about Walker, hilariously so.

If/when the judge clears Walker? You are still hanging on to that huh? You really are a til the bitter end true believer aren't you fatass?

I have watched on here for two months now as every time a lefty is out of ammo they go back to the election, as if being on the right side of coin toss makes their foolishness turn into genius. Like a guy who puts his life savings on the lottery and wins is suddenly a financial genius.

Although I wasn't for a long time, I eventually became a supporter of Romney after I learned what kind of man he was, and has been his whole life. I then became a cheerleader because the outcome mattered. I still think the lottery is a bad bet, Obama is a bad bet, but I can't stop the country from betting their children's future on Mega millions, even if it does make some people proud of being in that camp, because hey, a lot of people blow their money on the lottery, so it must be the smart thing to do. Be proud Honey Boo Boo, Idiocracy is a democracy.